Neil O'Brien is Director of Policy Exchange, an independent think tank working for better public services, a stronger society and a more dynamic economy. He writes in a personal capacity.

The rise of the 'street Left'

Riots, flashmobs, strikes and demonstrations. The temperature in British politics is certainly going up.

I’m starting to wonder if we are seeing the birth of a whole new kind of politics – the “street Left.” Radical new protest groups are acting together with a new generation of hard-Left trade union leaders, plus the support of traditional hard-Left parties like the SWP.

It started with the student riots.

What did you think when you saw the footage? Did it make you respect the protesters more? Did it make you think they had a good case?

Me neither. But some people loved it. In fact, some people on the hard Left think the Left should learn from it.

What does he mean? The hope of the street Left is that direct action will secure a set of ideological goals which haven’t succeeded at the ballot box. For them, the more trouble and strife the better. They want to create an image of a “divided Britain”, and it might just work.

Speaking from underneath a picture of Lenin in his office (bad sign) McCluskey has spoken openly of his desire to see our freely-elected government brought down by a wave of strikes and demonstrations. He argues that the poll tax riots helped to topple Mrs Thatcher, and hopes that TV images of chaos on the streets will do the same for the coalition.

So far, so old-school, you might think. What makes this new is the method. As well as conventional strike action, the street Left want to cause as much trouble as possible. But they also want it to look like a “spontaneous” uprising by “normal” members of the public, outraged by spending cuts. It’s traditional hard-Left tactics, but 21st-century media-savvy. In the same way that parties like the SWP have controlled groups like “Stop the War” and the “Anti-Nazi League”, a new generation of much more fashionable – and less obvious – front organisations are being launched and funded. They look new, but the usual suspects on the hard Left are really in charge.

To make all this agitation as effective and as divisive as possible, there is also a concerted effort to undermine the police. In an article liberally peppered with hard-Left clichés – “preparing for battle… class war… capitalist crisis… no case for cuts at all” – McCluskey also attacks the police for doing their job: “We must unequivocally condemn the behaviour of the police on the recent demonstrations.”

Hang on a minute. What exactly did the police do wrong? Given that there were a minority of lunatics trying to smash them in the face with metal barriers, I thought they did an exceptional job in really difficult circumstances. (Fancy having a fire extinguisher dropped on you from the top of an office building?) On the day of the last demonstration, one of the police constables who had been hit took shelter in the lobby of our office, liberally bleeding from the face. If anyone needs to be unequivocally condemned, it’s not the police. As Peter Clarke points out in an article today, they are going to need the public support of all mainstream politicians.

Who are the fashionable people on the Left right now? It’s not a crop of fresh young thinkers. Not some newly elected MP. It's direct action groups like “UK Uncut”.

They have a slick website and have captured masses of attention with a series of trendy “flash demonstrations”, organised using Twitter. But where is their campaign heading? A post on their website in praise of direct action talks about their agenda of “civil disobedience”: “Sometimes this might mean breaking the law, other times it may not.” Another post talks about bringing “armour, hard hats” to a demo. It will be interesting to watch how it develops.

I think that so far we have only seen the first stirrings of this new movement. The more the political temperature goes up, the higher the chances that someone will do something really stupid. In the nineteenth century Gustave Le Bon wrote about people “in the crowd” at a large demonstration feel that they can do almost anything. When students from wealthy backgrounds drop fire extinguishers on the police, or swing from the cenotaph, or pee on Churchill’s statue, that’s basically what’s going on.

And the temperature is going to go up. The radical trade unions are planning strikes and protests from the end of March to the royal wedding at the end of April. Len McCluskey says that “The TUC’s demonstration on 26 March will be a critical landmark in developing our resistance.” There’s talk of transport strikes. Bob Crow would like a general strike.

All of this could do lots of damage to the Coalition. But there’s a problem for Ed Miliband, too. It could colour the perception of the mainstream Left if the street Left make all the running. It could leave him faced with some difficult choices about whether to support on condemn divisive action.

I hope that lawbreaking, direct action and violence won’t succeed, or become normal in Britain. But we are clearly heading for turbulence, and the street left are looking for trouble.